Have you ever thought about the kinds of questions that you typically ask a prospect when s/he visits your community. Doesn’t it have the tendency to sound like an interrogation?

“Were you looking for a one or two bedroom?

“When do you want to move-in?”

“Will you be bringing pets with you?

“What is your budget?”

“How many will be living in the apartment?”

“What is your credit like?”

“Have you ever been featured on ‘To Catch a Predator?’” (kidding!)

While I absolutely believe that you need to ask specific questions about a customer’s specific needs, wants and desires, I believe that it’s also important to include the following five questions (not in any particular order)  somewhere in your tour, so you can “go deeper” and truly unpack what your prospect is really looking for.

What kind of research have you done? I learned this one from the great Lori Snider when she trained me at a company I worked for many years ago. It’s a great icebreaker question that I loved using especially when I saw someone coming in with a stack of papers printed from the Internet, or when I saw them with apartment magazines with pages dog eared, bookmarked and written on!

These folks have done their homework…let them tell you about it! Then you won’t repeat information they already know; freeing you to focus on the things that can help you close the sale.

What communities have you visited? I always wanted to know about my prospect’s experience so far~and who I was competing with! What better way to know, than to ask? (BTW: whatever communities they visited, I always said nice things about them and didn’t trash them.)

What was your favorite one so far? Why? This question allowed me to instantly see the customer’s point of view. As long as I did my homework and knew my competitors (HINT!) the customer’s answer to this question let me know where my customer stood and again, what I was competing against. Then I could target my tour with the customer to highlight our strengths to compete with the community at the top of the list.

Was there a community that you really didn’t like? Why? Just as important as finding out what a prospect likes is finding out what they don’t like. When a customer is willing to open up about what they didn’t like you’ll have the information you need to make the case why you’re the perfect choice.

“Joe, wow…I’m surprised to hear about the maintenance problems at Acme Apartments. Here at The Village, we have an incredible maintenance team…”

What attracted you to our community? This is a question that I liked to use right at the beginning, often in conjunction with asking prospects about how they heard about the community. By asking, up front, why a customer has chosen to visit your community, you’ll know what is important to them and can tailor and focus the tour on those things.

Don’t Interrogate~Have a Conversation!

One of the big mistakes many leasing associates (and other sales professionals) make is treating the information gathering process like an interrogation rather than a conversation! The entire tour process should be a “getting to know you” conversation, designed to discover if you have what your customer is looking for and then positioning your community to be the natural choice for their new home.

Let me know how these work for you!! Email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I’d love to hear your success stories!